BRP vs. MRQ & the OGL

[Atgxtg]

drohem,

I agree. In the past that was also a problem with third party liscene products for existing RPGs. Often the third party products didn't mesh in with the official stuff. Typically looking like the core game on steroids, with everything being overpowered.

BRP really isn"t susited for the D&D feat & prestige class method of expansion (MRQ, with it Legendary Abilities, and RQ inherited cult system, is). Where BRP could be expanded would be with setting books, new skills, additional spells & powers, or even new magic systems. But with the hit or miss nature of OGL, I"d rather not see 9crappy OGL products just to get 1 decent one. And I rather my local RPG store stocked ONE Chaosium Roman book for BRP than 2-3 OGL ones and miss out on the Chaosium book.

Since my local shops will only stock a small amount of BRP stuff anyway (d20 is the big market), they will probably only buy ONE book for a setting, and if they decide to try "Brand X"s book on Vikings for BRP, they probably won't buy the Chasoium Viking book.

[fmitchell]

I don't think that would happen. OGL has yet to create a secondary market for any RPG. All it does is provide additional sources of material for the primary market. No one's buying third party d20/MRQ products without being aware of the primary product line. Going OGL just means more product, inconsistent quality, and competition within your own game system. Then there is the inevitable confusion with someone buys the "Brand X" Roman book instead of the official one.

Hm, maybe "secondary market" isn't what I meant, now that I look up the definition.

Still, I disagree with the "competition within your own game system" and market confusion. First, Chaosium would retain the imprimatur of whether something had the "Official BRP" logo or was merely noted as "Compatible with BRP". (That could be a condition of the license: compatible products cannot use the logo, and can't attempt to hide the "Compatible with" part.) Secondly, if Chaosium required "BRP Core" to be physically separate, that's a big tipoff to consumers that a "compatible" product isn't official. Thirdly, the sort of market I envisioned was cheap PDFs, which is a market Chaosium doesn't even exploit. (Their only PDFs to date are reprints of their old books, at half the dead-tree price.) Fourth, there's already competition: MRQ. Flooding the market with BRP material would compete mainly with MRQ, especially if BRP touts the claim of being "the original".

While Chaosium relies on freelancers to bring in its revenue, they can't sponsor every project. Maybe instead of automatic licenses, Chaosium would explicitly dispense "compatible" licenses to projects they don't want to take on ... it reduces the appeal for independent publishers, but it will grow the total market. As Terry Pratchett points out, accepting a smaller slice of the pie isn't so bad if the pie is bigger.

Honestly, I'd be happy if Chaosium had a license allowing "BRP compatible" products only if they're offered free of charge or at cost, a la Creative Commons. It's still better than waiting for Chaosium to publish tiny print runs of a few books per year. That's definitely not the way to grow a market.

[Enpeze]

The assumption that OGL "opens" an additional market for Chaosium is just that, an assumption which can be true or not. At the moment there is just one fact. The BRP fandom is a limited number of people, which are sometimes not even very loyal to Chaosium itsself, rather to the game system it publishes. I doubt that Chaosium should risk that this limited number will use their limited game budgets to buy BRP material which comes not from Chaosium.

Even SJG avoids OGL. They rather rely on producing consistent quality material with excellent edtitorial work and which makes their fans happy. No compromise, no watering down the Gurps system by accepting other qualtity standards than those of Steve Jackson. I think they know what they do. And Chaosium is in a similar positition.

Another story is if we as gamers would have advantages if BRP goes OGL. Maybe its good for some of us, because they like to have more choices.

I am not against 3rd party settings and I would even buy some. (like Berlin 61 which I find very interesting) But those settings should appear under labels like Gore.

[Nightshade]

I don't think that would happen. OGL has yet to create a secondary market for any RPG. All it does is provide additional sources of material for the primary market. No one's buying third party d20/MRQ products without being aware of the primary product line. Going OGL just means more

But of course WOTC thought it did, indeed, help sell their core books; that's why they did it. Its hard to prove it did so one way or another, of course, but especially in the case of people looking at particular sorts of settings or genres, if the support isn't there they aren't using your books. This may not matter too much in the case of gamesmasters, who presumeably own the core book before they consider it anyway, but it may well matter for players, who will often go buy a core book for games they're going to play, but not just on spec.

Its hard to get any numbers on how well this works, of course, but at least WOTC at one time seemed to think it was a valuable extension of their business model. I can't help but think if it is, its even more true with BRP simply because there's only so much material Chaosium is going to put out with the best of intentions.

[Nightshade]

I think that the nature of the d20 system (class and level system) lends itself to the flood of OGL material. New classes and feats can be created ad infinitum. However, BRP (skill based system) doesn't lend itself to this type of expansion.

I can't really agree; while BRP doesn't have feats and the like, there's still plenty of room for alternate magic and other paranormal systems, gear for various sorts of settings, specialized rules subsystems (a set of cyberspace rules for example), monster books, and so on. Heck, just within extent subsystems there's often room for extension (divine spells for RQ for example). Some of this is more GM stuff (monsters, full subsystems) but things like gear books and spell books will sell to almost anyone.

[Nightshade]

The assumption that OGL "opens" an additional market for Chaosium is just that, an assumption which can be true or not. At the

Certainly true. In fact, its almost impossible to prove one way or another given the limits of information gathering in this hobby.

moment there is just one fact. The BRP fandom is a limited number of people, which are sometimes not even very loyal to Chaosium itsself, rather to the game system it publishes. I doubt that Chaosium should risk that this limited number will use their limited game budgets to buy BRP material which comes not from Chaosium.

The problem is this is only an issue if the third parties are fishing in the same exact pools that Chaosium is anyway. That can happen, but it can just as easily go the other way; its usually more useful for third parties to work in areas that the main producer isn't supplying. And by the limits of product pipeline, that's certainly going to happen with BRP. If nothing else, there are going to be niche products that Chaosium is not going to use their limited resources to pursue, but that, for example, a .pdf only publisher could take a chance on.

Even SJG avoids OGL. They rather rely on producing consistent quality material with excellent edtitorial work and which makes their fans happy. No \

SJG is also a much bigger operation than Chaosium, and as such can cover the ground themselves.

I am not against 3rd party settings and I would even buy some. (like Berlin 61 which I find very interesting) But those settings should appear under labels like Gore.

The problem with that is that there are people who actively won't buy that _because_ its GORE, and they consider GORE dodgy ethically.

[Atgxtg]

fmitchell,

The official, open, etc. tags don't mean much to consumers. If people know that a book is written to work with a certain game system, that's enough. The cheap PDF market thing doesn't matter much, since to play the game people would have to but the core rules anyway (okay, old time Chaosium junkies, something like 90% of the membership of this board, can probably get by without the core books. We'll miss out on a few things, but we can figure out most of it) before they could go cheap. The cheap PDF market isn't much of a market. Most cheap PDFs I buy, make me wish I had held onto my money, and make me leary of buying more cheap PDFs.

It isn't quantity, but quality that is required if we want the market to grow. At least if we want it to be a game worth playing. Maybe there are project that Chaosium doesn't want to tackle, but a poor quality supplment is worse than no supplement at all. I'd rather not have, say, a BRP Greece setting, than have a lousy one.

D&D was great for that route. There are quite a few setting books that shoehorn the setting to conform to the D&D system, rather than adapting the D&D system to the setting.

MRQ is a mixed blessing. Yeah, there will be some competition. There will also be some people who buy stuff for both systems and mix n' match. That's already happening with RQ and Stormbringer. But, there is a schism among the RQ crowd, so some will be buying for one game or the other. Since MRQ is OGL then most third party MRQ stuff is fairly easily adapted to BRP, anyway. Why add more competitors.

A smaller piece of a leger pie is fine, if the pie is big enough. I doubt BRP is going to be as popular as RQ2 was, and the "pie" will barely be able to sustain Chasoium, especially after MRQ.

OGL games take on two models. The big company approach, like with WotC, and to a lesser extent Mongoose, and the small company approach, as with many indie games. The former rely on the their tier business model and a large quantity of product to make a profit. The latter aren't really concerned with profit, and are really just trying to promote the game for fun.

Neither model would fit Chaosium right now. They can't produce enough product to ensure a large slice of the pie (for instance, if BRP is open source, Mongoose could in fact, take over the line by simply outproducing Chaosium, or by making some of their MQR products multisystem. Think of how easy it would be for Mongoose to rework MRQ Pirates into a MRQ/BRP book. In six months 90% of all BRP products could have the Mongoose label!). Nor can Chaosium go indie, since they are trying to keep afloat.

I think the only way for BRP to work is for Chaosium to avoid OGL like the plague that it is. Allow limited third party products, as in the 80s, but otherwise keep it an in house system.

[Atgxtg]

The problem with that is that there are people who actively won't buy that _because_ its GORE, and they consider GORE dodgy ethically.

Really, how so? It is a OGL MRQ line, even if it has more in common with CoC.

It probably isn't any less ethical than the BRP monograph's. They used a system that was sold to Avalon Hill. But, since you can't copywrite rules (and that is fact, look it up) pretty much anything from any RPG is open provided it isn't a trademark, special term, or setting specific.

[Lord Twig]

I seem to recall that Ars Magica released an "Open" rules set and they lost their shirt.

I agree with Atgxtg, going OGL with BRP is a mistake. Having people publish low-quality supplements is the least of the worries. The biggest problem is a stand-alone core book using the BRP OGL with no mention of BRP at all.

Think of Mongoose's Conan book. They have essentially re-published D&D and don't have to pay Wizards a dime. Wizards can't do anything about it because the system is "Open". Of course Wizards is big enough that they can out produce Mongoose and, more importantly where Mongoose is concerned, put out better quality books. Mongoose is good at turning out a lot of books, but most (but admittedly not all) are of low quality.

The last thing Chaosium needs is a publisher to by a product license (like Stargate or maybe David Edding's Belgariad or anything really) cut and paste the BRP OGL rules into it and then just added a few flavor pages and some monsters and release it as their own.

[Lord Twig]

Really, how so? It is a OGL MRQ line, even if it has more in common with CoC.

It probably isn't any less ethical than the BRP monograph's. They used a system that was sold to Avalon Hill. But, since you can't copywrite rules (and that is fact, look it up) pretty much anything from any RPG is open provided it isn't a trademark, special term, or setting specific.

GORE is perfectly ethical. Mongoose made their rules OGL, and GORE took it. That's the way it goes.

Chaosiums monographs are also perfectly ethical. Hasbro let their contract for RuneQuest expire. The trademark became open and Greg pounced on it. (Not sure why he did if he wasn't going to do anything with it.) The copyrighted text reverted to the original owner, which was Chaosium. So Chaosium is the rightful owner of the copyrighted text. They made the monographs available to enforce their copyright and so they could claim that it was not "out of print". This helped them to hold on to the copyright while they worked on the BRP rulebook.

Jason or some others with more knowledge of Chaosium might correct me on some of this, but I am pretty sure this is the case.

[Nightshade]

Really, how so? It is a OGL MRQ line, even if it has more in common with CoC.

Because they consider MRQ ethically dodgy, too. To those folks, essentially "reinventing" BRP and applying the RuneQuest name to it seems to basically end run the seperation of the ownership of the name and system that occured. I don't particularly agree, but that's the mindset.

It probably isn't any less ethical than the BRP monograph's. They used a system that was sold to Avalon Hill. But, since you can't copywrite rules (and that is fact, look it up) pretty much anything from any RPG is open provided it isn't a trademark, special term, or setting specific.

Well, there were two issues there:

1. Avalon Hill is functionally dead. There's not much real harm that can be done there since essentially, no one is using the RQ3 system anywhere right now.

2. Chaosium _does_ own the BRP system, just not the extremely specific RQ3 expression of it. Edit: I wasn't aware that the copyright had actually expired, but that makes sense, or there'd have been problems about those monographs, at least in the U.S.

I agree its not a dissimilar case, but even if you agree, that doesn't mean the one justifies the other. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" is not an ethical principal at root; its a practical one.

[Nightshade]

GORE is perfectly ethical. Mongoose made their rules OGL, and GORE took it. That's the way it goes.

You're making the error of conflating law and ethics. In many people's minds there's no direct relationship.

[Nightshade]

As to the OGL thing, I think this is a fundamentally unresolvable issue, because it essentially turns on whether you see the result as more harm than good; but since there's really no data to base either conclusion on, it just turns into an exercise in personal perception.

[NickMiddleton]

The problem is this is only an issue if the third parties are fishing in the same exact pools that Chaosium is anyway. That can happen, but it can just as easily go the other way; its usually more useful for third parties to work in areas that the main producer isn't supplying.

No its not. This was what was claimed would happen, but in practice, several suppleirs used the OGL/SRD to produce rulebooks that competeed head on with WotC own core rulebooks (the ones the OGL was supposed to promote sales of...) and WoTC very rapidly started publishing exactly the sorts of supplelemnts tha tthey'd origianlly claimed they wouldn't need to publish, as the third party producers would do them...

Really, how so? It is a OGL MRQ line, even if it has more in common with CoC.

Chaosium are still in business, still actively supporting Call of Cthulhu and about to release the new BRP - so BRP is clearly NOT an "abandoned" rule system such as OD&D or AD&D. GORE specifically and explicitly (without ACTUALLY infringing copyright or trademarks) clones large portions of Chaosium's BRP, in part thanks to the MRQ SRD and in part thanks to the legal nicety that copyright covers the form of expression, not the idea.

This strikes some people as morally dubious. Also, bear in mind that the original release of GORE didn't allow anyone to use ANY text from GORE - ALL the new text was claimed as Product Identity. This struck some people as both legally AND morally dubious, and pretty clearly against the intent and spirit if not the letter of the OGL. All credit to Dan Proctor, GORE and the GORE licenses WERE revised, and the whol text is now OGC, plain and simple.

It probably isn't any less ethical than the BRP monograph's.

Utter nonsense - Chaosium own the copyright on the text of the BRP monographs! The reason they put them into print was precisely because Hasbro told Chaosium that they regarded the AH (and thus Hasbro) claim on the copyright of the RQIII rules text to have lapsed and thus that the rights had reverted to Chasoium (from whom AH obtained them during the acrimonious settlement in the mid nineties).

But, since you can't copywrite rules (and that is fact, look it up) pretty much anything from any RPG is open provided it isn't a trademark, special term, or setting specific.

Indeed - but crack open a GURPS book, or a D&D book, or Call of Cthulhu and you will find open acknowledgemnt of the original authors of those games, and in the case of several SJG books, acknowledgement of the influence of other games. And SJG and other game companies (such as Pelgrane Press) license IP and brand names, even though by the letter of the law they don't have to: because it is courteous, and because treating existing works and publishers respectfully costs little and reaps much in the way of respect from customers and fellow publishers.

Others tread as close to the limit of the law as is possible ("the same system but not the same copyright words...") and regard it as acceptable to take Open Game Content and use it to clone other publishers books. All of which is entirely legal of course.

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

[Trifletraxor]

SO, if we say that OGL is not the way to go, but a "compatible with Basic Roleplaying" mark, and a "needs the Basic Roleplaying rulebook" statement, is there anyone here that can argue that would be a bad thing?

SGL.

[Lord Twig]

You're making the error of conflating law and ethics. In many people's minds there's no direct relationship.

I stand corrected.

[Lord Twig]

SO, if we say that OGL is not the way to go, but a "compatible with Basic Roleplaying" mark, and a "needs the Basic Roleplaying rulebook" statement, is there anyone here that can argue that would be a bad thing?

SGL.

Personally I think this would be the way to go.

[Enpeze]

You're making the error of conflating law and ethics. In many people's minds there's no direct relationship.

How true. Just because one obeys the law to the letter it does not mean that he is unethical. (and vice versa) Additionally there are many different individual and cultural interpretations what ethical is and what not.

[drohem]

I would like to see something similiar to what SJG did with their Lite version. The game 'x' is "Powered by" their Lite rules, but they still have their comprehensive universal system and product line.

I understand the irony in is because Chaosium essentially did this with BRP in the 80's and SJG kind of reverse engineered this concept.

[Atgxtg]

Because they consider MRQ ethically dodgy, too. To those folks, essentially "reinventing" BRP and applying the RuneQuest name to it seems to basically end run the seperation of the ownership of the name and system that occured. I don't particularly agree, but that's the mindset.

Oh, I do agree with that. Mongoose did pay for the RQ name, and could have used any RPG system they desired and called it RQ. Legally okay, morally less so. TO me it would depend on how honest they were about it. If sold as "the all new RQ with new game mechanics" that I'd say morally okay, but might or might not like the new system. On the other hand, if they claimed "the classic system returns-new edition designed with Greg Stafford & Steve Perrin" and that turned out not to be the case, I'd say misrepresentation. BTW, the latter is exactly what Mongoose did, and a major reason for the hostility that many RQ fans have with MRQ.

Well, there were two issues there:

1. Avalon Hill is functionally dead. There's not much real harm that can be done there since essentially, no one is using the RQ3 system anywhere right now.

Actually it is that AH doesn't own the lisence. I wish games like DragonQuest and James Bond could get back into print, along with all the other games that TSR/WotC ate up and buried.

2. Chaosium _does_ own the BRP system, just not the extremely specific RQ3 expression of it. Edit: I wasn't aware that the copyright had actually expired, but that makes sense, or there'd have been problems about those monographs, at least in the U.S.

The BRP "system" is a myth.Desipre what people try to claim, RQ is not an expression of BRP. RQ came first, and BRP is/was merely a 16 page intro to RQ, Strombringer, and CoC. Sort of like GURPS lite, only less so. BRP as a system is as much a Greg Stafford retcon as Elmal.

The BRP monograph IS RQ3, so it isn't a system per say, either.

Now, once the new BRP core book is released, BRP might actually become a game system, but lets face reality. Chasoium's RPGs never were BRP based, but RQ based. Instead of adding onto a core set of rules, they took is RQ, watered down, and adapted to a specific setting.

What Chaosium owns, is the name. You can't own a set of rules. So what Chaosium has to sell is the BRP trademark, AND the quality of whatever products they release.

Morally, I think the system (RQ) SHOULD belong to Steve Perrin, Ray Tourney and the others who wrote the rules. Legally, the RQ name belongs to Greg, BRP belongs to Chaosium, and the rules belong to no one.

I agree its not a dissimilar case, but even if you agree, that doesn't mean the one justifies the other. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" is not an ethical principal at root; its a practical one.

If you accept the concept of OGL, then morally you have to accept GORE. It an OGL MRQ product. If you don't accdept it, then the same argument can and should be used for any other OGL product.

[Enpeze]

SO, if we say that OGL is not the way to go, but a "compatible with Basic Roleplaying" mark, and a "needs the Basic Roleplaying rulebook" statement, is there anyone here that can argue that would be a bad thing?

SGL.

POV Chaosium:

Only if they get a percentage from the sales. Why should otherwise Chaosium allow this? Additionally they have to quality control such "powered by BRP" labeled books to avoid damaging their reputation and the overall reputation of BRP.

Such books have the potential to redirect the money of BRP fans from Chaosium to another publisher. Especially if Is this material is better than that of Chaosium.

POV Customer:

IMO, your 2 basic assumptions why you like OGL are that

1. more publishers create automatically a bigger fan base (and thus more interested players for our game tables)

2. even if the most OGL products are crap there will be some gems in it.

Both assumptions could be too optimistic.

[Atgxtg]

I would like to see something similiar to what SJG did with their Lite version. The game 'x' is "Powered by" their Lite rules, but they still have their comprehensive universal system and product line.

I understand the irony in is because Chaosium essentially did this with BRP in the 80's and SJG kind of reverse engineered this concept.

Yeah, Chasoium made three big bo-boos in the 80s.

1) Selling RQ to Avalon Hill. It was supposed to allow RQ to compete with D&D, but instead priced the game off out of the market, and stopped was was a productive run.

2) Failure to Support WoW. WoW was a great concept, but was half haertedly executed. Much like Land of the Ninja, it has the look of something that Chaosium published, but didn't actually use themselves. If WoW been supported as a universal ERPG, made a bit more compatible with itself (each book uses a different damage bonus), and given setting and other supplements, it could have acheived what GURPS and HERO did.

This would have definately been worth supporting after the AH deal, to give Chasoium a viable in house product line. What they are doing now with BRP is what they should have done 15-20 years ago.

3) Call of Cthulhu. CoC is a niche of a niche (Lovecraftian horror RPG). Fine and dandy, except it was supported to the virtual exclusion of everything else.

[Enpeze]

What Chaosium owns, is the name. You can't own a set of rules. So what Chaosium has to sell is the BRP trademark, AND the quality of whatever products they release.

Yes. I think you are right in this. Up to now they had "games" with BRP/RQoid rulesets. (heavily adapted for the setting)

With the upcoming book they have again a chance to build up a brand name and a quality trademark if they do it right. But I doubt that their economic skills are good enough to achieve this task. So I would not be surprised if the whole BRP project ends after 2-3 years and a few source books in a non-event.

[drohem]

*edited- it was off-topic completely

[Kloster]

Yeah, Chaosium made three big bo-boos in the 80s.

1) Selling RQ to Avalon Hill. It was supposed to allow RQ to compete with D&D, but instead priced the game off out of the market, and stopped was was a productive run.

2) Failure to Support WoW. WoW was a great concept, but was half haertedly executed. Much like Land of the Ninja, it has the look of something that Chaosium published, but didn't actually use themselves. If WoW been supported as a universal ERPG, made a bit more compatible with itself (each book uses a different damage bonus), and given setting and other supplements, it could have acheived what GURPS and HERO did.

This would have definately been worth supporting after the AH deal, to give Chasoium a viable in house product line. What they are doing now with BRP is what they should have done 15-20 years ago.

3) Call of Cthulhu. CoC is a niche of a niche (Lovecraftian horror RPG). Fine and dandy, except it was supported to the virtual exclusion of everything else.

1) If I remember well, they had the choice between bankruptcy and selling one of their flagship (RQ or CoC). The goal of competing with D&D by using AH power was an added bonus.

2) Agreed.

3) It is a niche that represented the largest part of their income. It is still now because it is their only product, but even at that time, it was important.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster